It’s been a few months since I decided to stop disciplining my kids and while it hasn’t been a complete transformation (yet), my goal is progress, not perfection. I do sometimes yell. I sometimes lose my temper and punish my strong willed little boy, but I have learned to forgive myself and I make an effort to admit when I’ve made a mistake and done something I shouldn’t have. My son will say “Mommy, you yelled at me. It hurt my ears.” And rather than say “well, if you hadn’t done x I wouldn’t yell!” I say “I know. I am sorry I hurt your ears. I don’t like yelling and I don’t want to do it. I am trying hard NOT to yell but I am only human and sometimes when I get overwhelmed by big feelings I forget and yell. Does that happen to you sometimes?” He will then tell me that yes, he doesn’t always want to hit or scream or throw his toys, but his body takes over and he can’t stop. I tell him that I will help him try to stop, and then we discuss how we can solve the problem in the future. Sometimes it works, sometimes he’s overtired or hungry or overwhelmed and hits anyway, but I have seen him in the moments when his sister is in his space and he DOES try to make an effort to solve the problem before he hits her. Unfortunately she’s 2 and doesn’t always get the message he’s trying to tell her, so we still have some work to do. BUT it’s progress! That’s the goal, right?

The managing of emotions is still in the works and my little boy doesn’t always feel like talking about how he’s feeling right away. Usually he has to have the tantrum first or be distracted temporarily before I can address those feelings, and that’s something I have a lot of trouble doing because I prefer to address the issue NOW! Believe me, it’s a source of contention with my husband too, who also likes to process his feelings on his own first before he is ready to address them. If I’m honest with myself I would say that I’m just really uncomfortable with leaving those feelings “unresolved”. I get anxious and can’t handle feeling anxious; I want THEIR feelings that are affecting me to “go away” and be “fixed” so that I don’t feel that energy anymore. So having a son who is very much like his dad in that he might not tell me how he feels for several hours is really difficult sometimes. Especially when I KNOW which emotions are underneath their anger and it’s so obvious they should just figure it out already and move on!

The Things I Haven’t Mastered Yet

Emotional regulation isn’t easy when one is trying to learn how to manage oneself AND happens to be a freaking empath who feels other people’s emotions even when they act “fine”.

I can deal with the constant addressing of feelings about 60% of the time without issue, but I still have a lot of work to do and it’s probably going to be something I’ll always have to remind myself to do. I notice it a lot when I talk to people; I’ll address their problem first, then I will stop myself and think “wait, they need their emotional needs met first” and backtrack. It still feels awkward to address the feelings in a genuine way. I used to say “it’s okay” or ” look on the bright side” or try to “fix” the feeling to make it better and move on. It is still uncomfortable for me to dwell on certain feelings when I believe that I’ve already addressed the issue. I mean seriously, I get that you’re disappointed that we can’t go to the park today because of the rain. It really sucks. You were looking forward to it, yes, I know. We can go another day. Here’s an activity we CAN do. Yes, I heard you the first 56,000 times you said it. You want to go to the park even though it’s raining. Yes, I can see how sad you are…(GET OVER IT ALREADY! OH MY GOD JUST STOP!!! SERIOUSLY THERE ARE A BILLION OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO BESIDES GO TO THE FUCKING PARK!!!)

Obviously that last part is in my head, but I’m pretty sure the empathic responses I give my 4.5 year old start to lose their empathy and start to sound robotic and annoyed after a while. So the whole emotions being rehashed over and over…really not my strong point.

Why I REALLY “Have To” Use My New Tricks

What IS my strong point? Playful Parenting. I’ve become the master of that, as long as I’m not too drained (too much empathy can drain me because I’m an introvert and people’s emotions are siphoning of my energy) and as long as my kid is in a good mood. If he’s overtired, hungry, overwhelmed, or overly emotional then the tricks don’t work the way I like them to, but 90% of the time I get a much better level of cooperation out of him than the other ways.

Here’s what happens when I try to do the “other” things, as an example of just how strong-willed my little boy is:

Commanding

Me: It’s time for bed. Go brush your teeth, go pee, put on your pull-up, get into your pjs, and climb into bed.

Him: NO!

Bribing

Me: We have time for two stories tonight if you go brush your teeth and start getting ready for bed right now…

Him: NO! I don’t WANT to go to bed! I don’t WANT two stories!

Me: Okay then *shrugging*

Him: NO!!!! I WANT two stories!

Me: Then go do what I asked.

Him: NO! Little (insert insult of the month here)!

Threatening

Me: If you don’t get ready for bed right now you won’t get a story.

Him: Fine, I don’t WANT a story! I’M NOT TIRED!!!!

Me: GO. TO. BED!!!

Him: NOOOOOO!!!

Giving Choices

Me: Do you want me to brush your teeth or do you want to do it?

Him: Me!

Me: Okay *hands him toothbrush*

Him: NO! YOU do it!

Me: Okay *tries to take toothbrush back*

Him: NO! I want to do it!

Me: Okay, then do it.

*little brat just stands there with his toothbrush in his hands, refusing to do anything until I find myself locked in a power struggle*

Asking Nicely

Me: Can you go get ready for bed now?

Him: Mmmm, NAH!

So yeah, this kid took every single trick from the conventional parenting methods and showed me just how futile they were with him. I HAD TO get creative. When I found How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen, I finally found something that would work. I created the EVIL Mr. Plaque Man!

Playful Parenting for the Win!

Who is this nefarious being? Well, he comes out at night after dinner has ended and bedtime routines must begin. You know he’s coming by his evil, maniacal, deep laugh.

MWAHAHAH!

My son will pause in whatever he’s doing. He’ll say “no, not yet!” then run to the bathroom. Then he will say “go, Mommy! Make him talk.”

And so I say in my supervillain voice: “I am the EVIL Mr. Plaque Man! I have come to drill holes in Hunter’s teeth!”

And he will say “Oh no you don’t, Mr. Plaque Man! I’m gonna get you!”

He teams up with Super Toothbrush and Mighty Toothpaste. Sometimes I mess up on their names and my son will correct me “NO, Mommy, it’s Super TOOTHBRUSH!” Clearly he’s paying attention, so that’s a win for me. He asks me to do the teeth next, so I’ll use my high pitched squeaky voice “oh no! Save us, Hunter!” and he’ll brush and giggle and I’ll say things like “MWAHAHA! I’M SENDING MY PLAQUE MONSTERS TO THE BACK WHERE HUNTER WILL NOT REACH!” And my son will remember to brush those back teeth super well because he won’t let his arch nemesis win this round!

At the end I will say “ARGH! YOU BEAT ME AGAIN, HUNTER! BUT I’LL BE BACK TOMORROW!”

And that’s how I get him to brush his teeth.

Then I change focus. He was slow at putting on his pjs and used to insist that I dress him. I would attempt to fulfill his request and get kicked for my trouble. It was frustrating for me and would end in his tears as I walked out of his room and told him “no story tonight” even though that was really punishing both of us. My son is super active during the day. I can ONLY get him to cuddle and sit for a story at bedtime. It’s our special time. So “no story” really sucks. I hate “no story” nights.

So now I created The Resistant Clothing. I do the voices of his pull-up and his pjs. They don’t want to go onto my son. They say they want to be free. I say “now pjs, it’s your job to be on Hunter. You have to keep him warm.” and they will say “NNOOOO I don’t want to.” and I will argue with them as I make the bed or tidy up the room as my son giggles and puts his pjs on. I do the same thing for getting him dressed to go out as well. And if I just say “go get dressed” my son will sometimes comply but other times he will say “make them talk, Mommy”.

I’ve done this for food, too. My almost-5 year old delights in biting off the many heads of his sentient chicken nuggets, fries, vegetables etc. He’s kind of sadistic about it, but I won’t worry too much about that since I also have a messed up sense of humor and yet haven’t murdered anyone and stuffed them in a wall or anything.

When Dad Doesn’t Use the Tricks

When I don’t use the tricks, the kid will dig in his heels. I see it all the time with my husband (who once could get him to do anything, but now is suffering the same frustration I have been since he was 15 months old). Barbara Coloroso calls it the second “Age of Rebellion”. 2 year olds rebel against mom, 5 year olds against mom AND dad. Teenagers rebel against the entire older generation. So having already gone through the first stage, I’m kind of enjoying that my husband is now experiencing that frustration too, but also I feel bad because he’s not working with the same tools I am. He tries, but these things take practice and you have to know when to use them and use them correctly. My husband works 90+ hours every 2 weeks; he isn’t around enough to catch on as quickly and it takes much longer for him to learn the tools by watching me in my more triumphant moments and trying them out for himself. It’s not to say he hasn’t picked up on it though. He’s slowly learning and when I catch him using one of my tricks I feel pride that he was paying attention and felt it was worth trying.

Other times I know he’s overtired and short on patience and he’ll command our son to do something and get resistance, and I’m thinking to myself “that’s not going to work”. And of course it doesn’t work because they are both strong willed and resist being controlled. If I’m in a good mood, I’ll step in to help. If I’m drained, then it’s a bad day or at least a bad few hours before I can recharge.

That’s the other thing to keep in mind, btw. THESE TOOLS WILL NOT WORK IF YOU DON’T RECHARGE YOURSELF.

Why I NEED a Break (and demand one)

I know that a lot of articles stress “self care” and that there’s also this attitude that parents don’t GET a break. You are expected to just suck it up and deal with the issue. Well, I say that’s bullshit! Of COURSE I deserve a break, and damn it, I am going to DEMAND one. I don’t care what the oldschool attitudes are! I am not JUST a mother; I am a person with needs. I took care of those needs before kids and I am still going to take care of them now. What I NEED is to have some time to myself at least every few days, if not every day. I NEED that time to myself because I am an introvert and being around people is draining. I NEED to recharge so that when the kids come to me with their feelings, I can address those feelings and mirror them. I have found that I have a limit to how long I can function without a break from people. I get little warnings that come up.

Level 1 is when I get so tired and drained that I just want to sleep. I don’t want to do anything and can’t focus on anything.

Level 2 is when I run out of patience. I start getting snappish, I have less tolerance for whining, and I start to run out of empathy. I’m functioning on autopilot and might “stress clean” and get frustrated when I can’t get things done.

Level 3 is the danger zone. I HATE Level 3. I don’t want to BE in Level 3. Level 3 is when all my empathy is gone! I start to yell and punish again. I stop being the fun, playful mommy and start acting like a drill sergeant. This tells me that I need a break within the next day or things will get much worse. I have trained myself to start demanding a break at this point and I get very anxious if that’s not possible.

Level 4 is when I know I have to get a break NOW! It is the worst level and one I very much wish to avoid because THIS is when the spanking mother I never wanted to be comes out and I become the worst version of myself. I DESPISE this person I become; she is an evil demon. She rages and scares her kids. She gets out of control and I have a very difficult time reigning her in. I see her less and less since I started demanding more help from other people. Even the members of my family who don’t believe I really NEED the help will get called on, and I have just started ignoring their opinions on what I “REALLY need to do” (which is often change my parenting style back to the “old ways” that worked for THEM, and doesn’t address that I actually WANT to parent differently). If I know my husband is going to be working a lot more and that I may not be able to get a break in the usual way (having him take the kids for the day) then I will call on my backups. And if I have to break down and cry and tell them that I’m at my breaking point, then I will do that because if I’m at Level 3 already then a simple change of scenery or taking the kids to the park is NOT going to cut it. Taking the kids ANYWHERE is just going to add to my level of frustration because at Level 3 I am in no condition to be around ANYONE. If the kids act up at the park I will lose it. I just know that about myself.

It’s important to know ones limits

I have been working very hard at looking at myself and just where those limits are in my efforts to do better than what I was taught. I WANT to do better because those tactics that come out in Level 3 and 4 are exactly the things I remember vowing I would NEVER do to my own kids because of how awful they made me feel growing up.

I remember just wanting to be heard, and so now I work at hearing my son when he’s upset. I try to look past the action (throwing his toys or hitting/screaming etc) and dig down to the feeling behind it. I address that feeling and I tell him that I sometimes feel like that too, so that he knows it’s okay to have those feelings and that he’s not bad, he’s just a little boy who got overwhelmed by his big emotions. I want him to have a healthy relationship with his emotions. I don’t want him to feel like he needs to push them away and I don’t want him to feel like he “can’t deal” when other people express their own feelings. It’s not any way to live life! It SUCKS! I don’t like that when my husband is upset and just needs someone (me) to vent to, my first instinct is to point out how he’s thinking about it all wrong or what he needs to do to fix it, or just giving the wrong tone with my empathy so that the words sound hollow. I don’t like that instead of addressing feelings when things get heated, my first instinct is to just hide in the bedroom all night until it all “blows over”. I know from my reading that this isn’t a healthy response to other people’s emotions and that if I’m to do what I need to do for my kids, I have to change this first reaction.

A BIG reason to change

So that’s my update on my Peaceful Parenting journey! I started this back in January (though technically I was reading the books in December) and now it’s April. I’ve cut WAAAAY back on sending my son to his room so that it only ever happens when I’m out of ideas and out of patience. I stopped sending him to the corner, stopped taking away his toys as a punishment for not cleaning them up (they only get taken if he’s throwing them, and only the toys that can hurt or break something or someone), and I try to use playful parenting tactics rather than command him to do something.

It doesn’t always work and I still have a long way to go, but the more I keep at it the less I yell.

As an added thought for this month, my son was playing with his sister in the tub earlier this week and accidentally broke something that REALLY wasn’t good. When I came in there I saw the toy in his hands and he looked at me in fear. He started to cry. He said “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry!” I didn’t immediately see what he had done (I had been finishing up the dishes while listening intently to the giggles of the kids and had only heard a splash, a crash, and an “oh no!” from my son. I should add that I was calm that day. I had managed to get some rest the night before and though my husband was at a friend’s place helping him with his truck that night, I was only at Level 1. I had only yelled once that day and I had caught myself. So the look of terror in my son’s eyes was heartbreaking to see. This poor little soul was sobbing. He was so scared that he had done something SO bad that he would surely be punished.

It was pretty bad. Repairs would have to be done and my husband wouldn’t like it, but it WAS an accident. I knew that he hadn’t meant to do it. He had been playing and trying to make his sister laugh. He’d gotten too excited, he lost control of where his toy landed. Accidents happen. Had I been right there, I probably couldn’t have stopped it from happening and couldn’t have predicted it.

What shocked me was that he had already tried to “fix” it. He had cleaned up the broken pieces and put them in the garbage and done so rather quickly considering that I had rushed in there to see what had happened. And still, he was crying. He was inconsolable.

“Don’t yell at me.” he cried. “Don’t hurt me.”

He has been spanked before. I am not proud of it. It’s a source of deep regret and shame, as well as self-loathing that I have raised my hand to my child, but it’s a reality. And that reality is what caused that fear in his eyes. And I hated myself for it. I hated myself SO much that in this moment when he accidentally broke something, his first instinct was to beg me not to hurt him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said as calmly as I could. I told myself in my head “this is not an emergency. Your child needs comforting.” And I told him to get out of the tub.

He cried harder. He begged me not to hurt him. I calmly said “I’m not mad, sweetheart. It was an accident. You need to get out and so does your sister. There might be broken bits you can’t see”

He kept crying. His sister whimpered, not sure what to do. Mommy wasn’t upset, but Brother was and it was confusing. I took her out of the tub first, looked her over, and determined that she was okay. No cuts. I toweled her off and got his towel and wrapped him in it and hugged him. I told him that he seemed so scared and I was sorry and that it was okay and that I wasn’t mad at him. I told him I was just happy he wasn’t hurt because he could have been cut (he did have a small cut on his toe upon further inspection, but we covered that with a band-aid and he didn’t even make a fuss until I pointed it out). I told him we needed to tell Daddy.

Fear returned, and I hated THAT too. This is what punishment does to kids. It makes them fear, even when they don’t need to. It makes ME feel such shame and guilt that WE were the cause of that fear. So I held him, rocked him, reassured him. And still this little boy was unsure of me. “You’re not going to yell?” he kept asking. He really didn’t believe that I wasn’t upset. I told him “well I don’t like what happened, but it was an accident and can be fixed. I know you didn’t want to break it. You wanted to make your sister laugh. And when the toy hit that thing and broke it, that scared you because you knew it was not a good thing to do. But you tried to clean up the mess, and that was good that you wanted to keep your sister from being cut, but YOU could have been hurt too. I’m glad nobody got hurt. That could have been very dangerous.”

I called my husband and told him calmly what happened and how upset our boy was. I was relieved that he got my message in my tone that he needed to be very careful how he addressed this. He was calm and echoed what I had already said; this was an accident, it’s okay, and that we would fix it.

My boy went to sleep that night knowing he was truly special and loved, and that he would not be punished for his accident, no matter how bad it was. But I lay awake much longer and I thought about his little face full of tears and it broke my heart. It made me resolve to keep at this new way of parenting and to keep rejecting the old ways until that awful, scary, angry mother becomes nothing more than a distant memory of the time when Mommy didn’t know any better. I want him to KNOW that I recognize how much that scared and hurt him, and how sorry I am. I don’t want him ever thinking that spanking and punishment was justified. I don’t want him thinking he’s “bad”. I want to give him everything I didn’t know I had needed as a child; all the love and understanding that my parents hadn’t known to give even in my worst moments. It’s easy to be that kind parent when the kids are “good”, but when they test your limits that’s when you really have to work at it. And it’s moments like what I experienced this week that show you how your kids actually see you when you’re at your worst, and how often you’re at your worst.

The Legacy I Want to Leave Behind

This week was an eye-opener. It really pushed me to do more to be better for him. So I will continue to work on my demons. I will continue to figure out just where my limits are and find ways to fulfill my needs so that I reach the worst levels only a small fraction of the time, if at all. And I will continue to show my poor little boy that Mommy really ISN’T going to yell at him and that she certainly doesn’t want to hurt him no matter what he does, because those things are not okay to do to the people we love.

And hopefully those messages will stick with both of my children and my future grandchildren won’t ever know that fear that I saw in my son’s eyes. Because at the end of my life, when my children are grown and look back on their childhood and share memories of me, I want them to remember the funny voices and the characters we made up together. I want them to recall fondly my stories of Evil Mr. Plaque Man and the Resistant Clothing. I want them to remember Mommy Panther who catches her little baby panthers and Mommy Kitty who snuggled in her son’s lap. I want them to remember Kid Mommy who reversed roles and pretended to be scared to sleep alone; who made her children giggle uncontrollably. I want them to remember the crafts, the movie nights, the baking, the story time, the bedtime snuggles, the made-up songs with their names and the sing-alongs to Disney show tunes. I want them to have so many favorite moments with me that they can’t pick only a few, and I want them to know without any doubt that I loved them. In the end of my life, I want to know that I was the best mother I could be for my kids with the knowledge I had at the time, and that I never stopped trying to be better for them.

People can roll their eyes at my parenting all they want. I don’t believe kids need to “obey”; that’s not the most important thing. Obedience doesn’t get you very far as an adult and can actually work against you. So I’m not choosing obedience anymore; instead, I’m choosing love. And if LOVE is going to get me kicked out of the “good parent” club, then so be it. I wasn’t much for following others anyway.

Years ago, my father gave me the most important piece of future parenting advice I ever needed to hear: “Be at least one step better than I was. Do better.”

I took that advice to heart. I questioned what I was taught. I questioned my upbringing as I learned new information that contradicted what I had been told. And I DID BETTER.

What my father didn’t tell me though was how in the process of learning to do better, I would come to a lot of shocking and often painful realizations about myself. There would be things that I would learn that I wouldn’t want to face because they would confirm what I had lost or never had.

When I learned about attachment theory, I felt that pain so strongly. I realized that most of my problems stemmed from my lack of emotional regulation; mainly, my difficulty relating to others, dealing with other people’s emotions when they get intense, and how I feel both insecure and suffocated in relationships. I realized that my constant fear of being alone was a result of my insecure attachment. I learned that punishment was a big factor in how I ended up seeing myself. I have struggled most of my adult life trying to re-learn the things I should have learned in childhood.

I don’t blame my parents for not knowing what they didn’t know at the time, but I also can’t ignore the pain that it causes me. The grief I felt as I realized that the way I was parented in early childhood was truly painful and that regardless of how I had acted out to “deserve” that punishment, my childhood self had only been seeking love and acceptance. When she didn’t get that love and acceptance, she got scared. She acted out because she was angry, and instead of her parents recognizing that anger she was punished for “having an attitude”. It’s no wonder that I still don’t know how to handle my emotions well. I stifle my feelings until they finally get to be too much, and then I lash out at people. I throw an adult temper tantrum.

The more I read about emotional regulation, the more the lights turn on in my subconscious and I start to see the scars of my childhood clearer than ever.

I see that lonely, scared, anxious little girl who cried in her bed at night but nobody ever knew; or if they did, they never came to hold her and rock her (I should know; I cried often back then).

It made me weep and rant and scream and rage at the injustice of it all! I felt betrayed. As a mother myself those feelings were magnified further because I understood what the books meant about parental instincts. How often did I feel that visceral pull to my children when they were in distress? How often did I want to just wrap my arms around them and take that pain away?

Knowing how powerful that feeling was, it is difficult to accept that when I was that small child in distress, the caregivers I was dependent on stood by and let me cry. They didn’t help me work through my feelings. They punished me for screaming, for “carrying on”. They told me to “grow up”, “suck it up”. “Life’s not fair!” they said.

The phrases that my books suggest I use with my kids were things I never heard as a child, and THAT hurts. How much nicer would it have been for someone to acknowledge that I was afraid or sad or angry, but that they would help me through it? Instead of “That’s enough!”

“Go to your room, young lady!”

“Watch your mouth!”

“Don’t you dare talk back to me!”

“Because I said so!”

“It’s just a ___! You’re making a big deal over nothing”

“You’re too old to be freaking out over this!”

“Suck it up!”

“Grow up!”

“Some kids have it so much worse than you! Be thankful!”

“Stop whining about things that aren’t important”

“You’re being ridiculous”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I wrote out a letter that I will never publish and never send, but even as I wrote it, I cried. I felt the pain of being that little girl all over again with every word, even as I worked to forgive the person who had caused that pain. It was hard; it was like opening up an old wound that I’d long since tried to bury under a million bandages and anesthetize with a dozen painkillers until I could pretend it wasn’t there at all.

But I had to do it for my children. In reading those books on emotional regulation, I realized that I will never be able to accomplish what I’m determined to do for my children until I heal myself. I have to examine all the ways in which I was taught the wrong ways of handling my emotions and all the ways in which I wasn’t given what I had truly needed. It’s the ONLY way I will be able to help my own children work through the same feelings that I had as a child, so that instead of teaching THEM to shut down those emotions, I show them that ALL their feelings are okay.

Because when you know better, you do better. And while I know that I am only working with the current information that is available to me NOW, my willingness to change and evolve will become the most important lesson my children will ever need to know in order to do better than I did.

About a month ago I made a bold decision that surprisingly no one challenged me on. I don’t know if it’s because they didn’t see the post, didn’t read it, didn’t care, or if they were just so shocked by what I said that they couldn’t think of a response that would be diplomatic enough to express their disappointment with me.

Whatever the reason, NOBODY has commented on that post and I haven’t heard a word about my new approach to discipline–or more accurately, the complete absence of it.

I will admit right now that I haven’t had a perfect transformation (yet). I still yell sometimes and there are still those moments when I want to just give up and MAKE my son behave. But I haven’t given into that strong urge that stems from my own lack of emotional regulation and for that I’m freaking proud of myself!

It’s been a rather interesting several weeks using this new model of parenting and it helps that I’ve been reading Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids every night and using the new tools that I’ve found in the chapters as well as in “The Whole Brain Child“, the latter of which I photocopied and taped to the cupboard doors in my kitchen. My son isn’t magically transformed into an obedient child, but things are definitely easier than they used to be. To put it simply, when I got rid of punishment I got results a LOT faster and with far less drama!

Power Struggles are Disappearing

It wasn’t always enough to just offer him the choices or calmly tell him what he needed to do. At certain times of the day (the morning, before mealtimes and a few hours before bedtime) it didn’t matter how nicely we asked him to do something (even something that he would probably want to do, like turn off the TV to get dressed and go out with Dad), he would put up a fight. He would scream “NO, Little Shithead!” He would throw things if we stepped in and just turned off the TV on him. He would turn a simple request into a huge power struggle and our default solution was always to tell him that if he didn’t stop right now he would lose his privilege we were offering him (“that’s it! NO park/bedtime story/treat at the grocery store/going out with Daddy later”).

I always hated that ultimatum because it was as much a punishment for ME as it was for our kid. If he lost special Daddy Day then I lost Special Mommy By Herself For a Few Hours Day. Lose the bedtime story and I lose that special time where it’s just me and my son settling down to read. No treat? Great! Now we’re dealing with a hungry AND angry kid in the grocery store who keeps whining for a treat anyway.

Doesn’t want to pick up his toys with me? “How fast can you pick these up? I bet I can beat you to it! Oh no, you’re so much faster than me! Oh no, you’re going to win! Uh oh, I’m almost done…oh no! You beat me because now your sister is helping you! Yay! We’re done! Now we can go and play your game! Good job!”

Doesn’t want to brush his teeth? “Race you!”

Doesn’t want to put something in his room? “Can you do it before I get to 30 counting? Oh wow! You got it done in 24 seconds!”

Fight anger with more play time!

Sometimes the suggestion of a game wasn’t enough. Sometimes he was just so crabby and he would hit me. In the past I would immediately send him to time out in his room. He would scream and throw things and hit even more. I would spend an entire afternoon fighting with that child to stay in his room and stop acting out. I would take every single toy he owned and put it in my room and tell him he could have them back when he stopped hitting or throwing things. He would just get angrier. He would hurt his sister, he would hurt the cats, and he would hurt me.

I don’t punish him or even react to him hitting me anymore. I stop, I take a deep breath, and then I attack him…playfully!

I channel all that frustration with him and transform it. I say “THAT’S IT! I HAVE HAD IT! YOU’RE GONNA GET IT NOW!” I say it in my “fake mad voice” and then I grab him, thrown him to the foam mat that I lay down in the living room and I tickle him until all his hits and kicks and “mad” is out of his system.

It releases his frustration, he stops hitting, and then afterward he’s more willing to play my clean up game.

When he can’t calm down I change his focus

We have a big tree in our yard and squirrels live in it. When my son is bouncing on the couch and I need him to stop but he’s too wound up I no longer MAKE HIM sit. I don’t threaten, I don’t even yell. Yelling never worked and would lead to violent outbursts in the past. Obviously trying to calm him down would mean that the last two tactics I use (game playing and wrestling him into “submission”) would rile him up more. So I pretend there’s something outside the window.

“Shh!” I say. “Listen! Quiet! Watch!” I point out the window at the tree. “Did you see him?”

My son will stop and look out the window (there’s nothing actually there, but he thinks there is) and I keep watching. I tell him in a whisper that he has to watch and be quiet.

Sometimes he’ll spot a bird or a cat I didn’t see, other times he’ll say “he went home” and either way he has stopped jumping on the couch. He’s calm and I can then tell him “hey, would you like to do a craft/color/work on your letters with me?” And he will settle down to work on something quiet.

These are just some of the things I’ve started doing with my son instead of punishing him (his sister is only 22 months old and so wouldn’t be punished for anything right now anyway) and I am amazed at how much better the days are going.

Sure, he’s still got an explosive temper and he doesn’t always want to do what I ask him to, but he’s also ONLY 4 YEARS OLD! And he’s doing much better than a lot of kids his age; the final visit with the child development specialist confirmed that last week. She actually said “I’m not needed here; you’ve got this!”

As for whether or not my son is actually learning to control himself, well he was playing with his sister and she destroyed his block tower. He said “Mommy, she broke my tower but I didn’t hit her, no.” And when he has accidentally hurt me or even hit me out of anger HE is the one apologizing and it’s without me having to say anything to him. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Mommy” he’ll say. “I didn’t want to but my body was controlling me”. He gets it. He is working on his impulse control and the older he gets the easier it will get.

What about the baby?

His sister is probably going to be my biggest “experiment” but I don’t know if it would be an accurate comparison because she’s more laid back than her big brother was at her age. Their personalities are like day and night, despite being raised nearly the same way.

I do know that it is easier to calm her down when I acknowledge her feelings and just give her a hug.

“I know, that scared you”

“Yeah”

“You want to go play now?”

“Yeah”

“Okay, go play”

Progress, Not Perfection

I will say this now: I am NOT a Perfect Parent. I don’t aspire to be one either. I am still learning and I don’t plan to ever stop learning. But one thing that this new approach has shown me is that I am finally making progress after years of not knowing how to handle my spirited child(ren) in their most difficult moments. More importantly, I am no longer as frustrated as I used to be. I don’t yell as often as I did. I am actually succeeding in my goal not to spank.

Today my child tested my patience. EVERYTHING was a battle. It didn’t matter how many times I tried to redirect him, wrestle and tickle him, or cuddle him. He was just in one of those moods where NOTHING works.

But even when I was about to lose it on him, I was able to stop. I got SO close to that breaking point when I would normally storm off and lock him out of my bedroom or worse, spank him, and I DIDN’T DO IT.

I grabbed him, I dragged him into his room, I threw him onto the bed. I was SO angry with him because he would not stop hitting me or his sister and he BIT her. He had called me a “Shithead Mommy” and I was DONE!

But I stopped. After I threw him on the bed I stopped. I laid down on the bed with him and I just held him. He was crying and saying how sorry he was and begging me not to hurt him because he knew that he had pushed me to my limit, and instead of telling him he was to stay in his room until he was ready to calm down, I just lay there. I held him. He started to cry and I picked him up, no longer feeling that rush of adrenaline, and I rocked him.

And after he was finished crying he wanted to watch a movie in his room so I put on Fern Gully.

Did he act up again after that? Well, yes he did. He’s 4 and he’s dealing with some really big emotions. He needs to feel safe again after all that punishment he’s faced in the past. All those times when I would send him to his room and yell and take his toys hardened his heart. He was scared to cry so he acted out with anger instead. But he is acting out LESS than he used to; that’s the difference. He’s calming down faster than he did a month ago.

A few hours later I told him that hitting isn’t okay. I said “I’m learning to control my body and you need to learn to control yours. What can you do instead of hitting?” And then we came up with some ideas on what we can do.

It’s WORTH The Effort!

It’s going to take time, a lot more effort, and a lot more patience. But I’m confident that I will be able to get him to a point where he won’t need to repress his emotions and he won’t need to hit to release any frustration. Considering that emotional regulation is what’s severely lacking for many males in our society, this is HUGE! If I can raise my son to know how to control his anger AND deal with his feelings, then I will be doing every woman he ever dates a huge favor. I will have succeeded in raising a man who will not EVER hit a woman OR use his size to intimidate or control her. I will have raised a man who also won’t hit or bully others to get what he wants and more importantly he will go into parenthood with a gift of emotional regulation. He will have a new parenting model that will benefit my future grandchildren.

So yes, this new way of parenting takes a lot more creativity, patience, and it’s time consuming. I’m not going to get results overnight. He isn’t going to immediately comply with every request I make, but the long-term goal has always been to raise a MAN who will do right in this world because it’s right, not because it’s expected. My goal is to raise a human being with true empathy and compassion; someone who won’t “just follow orders” because someone evil is threatening him into compliance. I want to raise human beings who question the authority when the rules are unethical or marginalize a group of people unfairly. I want them to stand up against injustice and to recognize that injustice. I want them to smash the patriarchy!

The very LAST thing I want to do is raise another asshole like the ones I see on social media all the time. And if I do my job right, maybe, just maybe humanity might not be so doomed after all.

I eventually decided after three days that I wasn’t willing to put in the work to sleep “train” my child. I wasn’t willing to do it because I didn’t believe in it. I was only doing it because people told me that I was “supposed to do it” and thankfully my stubborn and intuitive nature and temperament served me and my children well. I was able to say “fuck that shit” and go back to what worked.

My children thrived, eventually slept through the night while in my arms, and at four years old my son was willingly sleeping in his own bed in his room with fewer and fewer nights of climbing into bed with me.

Potty training was much the same. The more I pushed the issue in deference to the other adults who told me that my two year old “should” be pushed into it, the more he resisted. It was a battle with this little guy who would show such emotional distress every time I tried to get him to sit. I didn’t agree with the methods, knew they weren’t working, but I kept at it because that was what other people told me I “needed” to do.

When I backed off and focused on HIS feelings, he came to the decision almost overnight at three years old that he was ready. And I didn’t have any of those “regression” moments that were considered to be commonplace for children. He just decided “I’m ready to face this and Mom says it’s okay to wait if I need to” and that was it.

Because “Discipline” Doesn’t Work and Never Has

The one holdout though was discipline. I KNEW that no matter what I did, it wasn’t working. I have been blessed (NOT cursed) with a child who is smart enough to know his own mind. He KNOWS just as I do that all those discipline strategies are quick fixes. They are slapping Band-aids on the actual problem while not addressing the root cause. You can’t slap a Band-aid on a cut finger and expect it to heal if there’s still a splinter embedded in the skin, and you can’t expect a time-out to “work” when the child still feels like they haven’t had their true need addressed.

It took me going to see a child development specialist about my son’s behavior to figure out that my problem isn’t me OR my son. Not really, anyway. My problem is that my attachment parenting strategy was working as it was supposed to, but then when he began to “act up” as was appropriate for his age, I fell back into a terrible pattern of behavior: I started subconsciously trying to appear “good enough” for OTHER people and stopped being “good enough” for the only one that mattered: my son.

I stopped listening to what he was telling me with his behavior: “I’m sad/hurt/frustrated/overwhelmed” and instead focused on extinguishing the behavior itself. I didn’t address his feelings, I told him “no, that’s bad. Stop.”

No, REALLY! It Didn’t Work The Way You Think It Did!

And then I put him in a time out. Or I took away his toys. Or I yelled at him to stop crying and carrying on. Or in my worst moments, I would spank him. I HATED when I would get to that point because I don’t believe in spanking. I don’t care what any of my relatives say, SPANKING DID NOT WORK!!!!

They’re about to say “well you stopped the behavior! We only had to warn you…”

Yes. I stopped the behavior. I disconnected from you, stopped caring what you thought, decided you were “mean” and didn’t want to behave for you. My name calling and sass-back was my way of showing you just how much I didn’t give a damn what you thought. I openly rebelled against YOU because I wasn’t interested in “earning” your praise. I didn’t see your love as unconditional. And if I “stopped” misbehaving, it was only on the outside. On the inside I was thinking ugly things about you. I HATED you. I might still harbor some resentment toward you, which is why I don’t tell you things and why we aren’t as close as we could have been.

I learned to behave in your presence to avoid punishment. I didn’t have any desire to behave for you if I didn’t perceive your authority and I didn’t have any desire to behave for you without that “fear”.

I don’t want my children to behave out of fear.

Contrary to Popular Opinion, I Am NOT “Fine”!

Do you know what “fear” gets you as an adult?

It manifests as a desire to sacrifice your own needs and happiness in order to keep people around.

It means not telling your boyfriend that you are struggling to pay half the bills every month because you don’t make as much money as he does. So instead you silently suffer and go into debt until finally you’re in way over your head and he says “why didn’t you just come to me sooner? I would have helped you.”

It means not telling your parents when they’ve stepped over the line and made you feel less than capable as an adult, and instead you bottle up all that resentment and hurt and feelings of not ever being “good enough”, and then you overcompensate for that by trying to do MORE than you’re actually able to do. And then you fall short in some way and they say “well clearly you can’t handle that much stress” and you take it as an attack and get immediately defensive. Or you don’t unleash it on THEM, but instead your spouse says something that triggers what THEY would say, and you attack out of fear that your spouse is also criticizing your ability to handle things.

When I was a child growing up in my dad’s home a constant phrase I would say in the face of an unfair punishment was “I just want to be heard.” I would say it and scream it and write it. I would feel this sense of betrayal whenever I wasn’t “heard”. My dad didn’t have the benefit of the knowledge I have available to me now. When he was going to university and studying attachment theory it was still in the early stages of discovery. He was able to do better for me and my brother. I benefited from his learning from the age of eleven to adulthood and my brother benefited from the age of seven to adulthood. The difference between him and I is so profound. He was this explosive, volatile little boy when he was younger. He would tear apart his bedroom, scream, throw things, threaten me with actual weapons, and was just incredibly frustrated and temperamental. We were all worried he would end up in prison if he continued like this.

My dad worked with him. He used the new-found knowledge of child development to emotionally regulate my brother. By the end of his teen years he was transformed! Today you wouldn’t guess that my brother was ever like that as a child; he is a completely different person. He is calm and able to handle any conflict without violence.

I was late to benefit from these lessons. I spent the first eleven years of my life not being able to trust in my attachments. My dad gave me the psychology textbooks and I was able to understand the WHY of my fears of abandonment and my need for approval even as it warred with my need to be my own person apart from what everyone “expected” of me. It would often result in me doing the bare minimum of what was expected with no real desire to do any more, and then I would explode “it’s NEVER enough for you!”

It took becoming a mother for me to address this, and even today I am still trying to work on these issues of being “good enough”.

When You Know Better You Do Better

And so it came to my seeking help outside of the family that believed in discipline/extinction of behavior and turned to the child development specialist. She gave me three books to read: “Rest, Play, Grow”, “The Whole Brain Child” and “Discipline Without Damage”. Each one of them came out long after I left college and I have discovered that my learning of attachment theory was on the right track, but there’s so much more that has been discovered since I last cracked open the textbooks.

There’s been plenty of studies brought to light that spanking doesn’t work and is actually damaging. I know very well what a lot of my relatives have to say about that because they love to share those memes about how kids don’t “respect their elders” anymore because of all these parents “refusing to spank”. Well, I have news for them: it DOESN’T work! And spanking ME did NOT earn you my respect. In fact, if you spanked me often for any misbehavior and you’re wondering why I don’t have a strong relationship with you, that’s why. Nobody RESPECTS a bully; they FEAR the bully. Big difference.

Here’s WHY kids aren’t showing “respect” anymore: they aren’t connected to their adults. They also lost their fear because that big invisible man in the sky that some people believe in no longer holds any fear for them either. Yes, I went THERE. What is the concept of God if not a bigger “parent” for the adults who grew up only knowing how to “fear and obey”? That’s not true morality; that’s being good out of fear of punishment. And people then justify their asshole tendencies as being from a “moral” standing.

We Can No Longer Deny That There IS a Better Way

Well I don’t want to parent my kids to fear and obey. I don’t want my kids to behave just to please others. I want them to develop moral character out of an innate desire to be kind and loving and to do that I have to address their feelings. I can’t stifle them or stomp them down or ignore their needs to “be heard”. I can’t “make them” behave. I will NOT force my kids to comply and I will not impose my will on them. I will treat them like people. They are little people with big feelings who need to be heard so that they can cry and then move on to the learning part of the experience that caused them distress.

Mental illness is so prevalent in our society and is blamed on everything from technology to toxins to GMOs, but then a book comes out that states that MAYBE the way we were taught to parent our children might be causing these issues, and it’s backed up by studies and brain scans that were not available to us twenty years ago, and yet people dig in their heels and say “but I’m FINE!”

No, you’re not. If you think about your feelings when you were a child, and I mean REALLY think about them, you will realize that you didn’t learn how to handle your emotions; you learned how to “suck it up” and bury them. You learned to just follow orders. And then you grew up and either blindly followed the status quo or you “un-learned” that obedience but might struggle with your emotional regulation when faced with stress.

I’m Going Back to My Instincts

I have always been introspective. I know instinctively when something isn’t working. I knew even as a child that any punishments weren’t “teaching anything” and that I would just do what I was going to do the second I could get away with it, or else I’d think “they just don’t get it” and close myself off emotionally. I put up walls of ice and it has taken a husband and two children for me to bring those walls down and start to identify my triggers and where they’re coming from. I can stop and think about the WHY of my feelings and address that need so I can come back to myself. My children are still too young to do that work themselves. Their brains are not developed enough to stop and think before they do something and considering how even adults can fly off the handle when they’re overwhelmed it is RIDICULOUS to think that children were EVER actually capable of controlling themselves. They can’t. They need our help to do that.

When I address my child’s need for me to “hear” them and validate their feelings, I get a better response. My kids calm down faster, they hear me, and I can redirect them to doing what I need them to do.

When I yell and threaten and punish, my kids yell and scream and act out. Hitting them teaches them to hit me back when they’re angry. Yelling at them causes them to scream at me. Taking their toys causes them to no longer care if they have any toys to play with. They disconnect from me, harden their hearts and put up the same walls that I did decades ago.

I don’t want that for them. I have the knowledge that discipline in that way doesn’t work. I don’t want to bully or bribe my kids into behaving for me; I want to address their emotional upsets so that they can stay connected to me and feel safe to come to me. I want them to want to be good for me because they can safely express their emotions as is developmentally appropriate.

So thank you, but I won’t be disciplining them anymore and I no longer care what you think about that.